BL 6

Issue #6, September 2007

Empress

by Peter Schwartz

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In This Issue...

Poems

Painting by Jeff Crouch

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Barbara Hamby

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Writes the Dictionary

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Ira Sukrungruang

Eclipse, May 1984 Fortune

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Tree Riesener

Thanksgiving

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Erin Keane

The God of Peonies

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Kim Jensen

Confession Hello?

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Pat Daneman

Hunger

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Michelle Morgan

Oysters

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Shurooq Amin

Chiseled Linen

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Fiction

Painting by Peter Schwartz

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Willy Blake

Becoming Normal

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Anna Clark

The Makings of a Fairy Tale

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Creative Nonfiction

Painting by Sue Turner

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Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

Pompeii

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Cyn Kitchen

Disaster Preparedness

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Contributor Bios

40

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#6 Poetry

Watercolor Dehydrate

by Jeff Crouch

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Barbara Hamby ELIZABETH CADY STANTON WRITES THE DICTIONARY Even Susan thought I was too radical by half, giving women the right to sue for divorce. Hush, I said, it will all be ours one day. A beautiful (adj.) knife, the mind, cutting through that Victorian drivel.

My brain and Susan's voice—we were an army (noun) of two and thousands of foot soldiers. The backdrop (q.v.) was the (art.) civil war, emancipation, and after slaves were free, why not women? Marching got us nothing, but black men got the vote. Universally (adv.) we were screwed. Susan got back on her soapbox, yelling about the vote, her one-note harangue. Chintz arm chairs were not for her, Quaker virago moving (verb) countries into a time they could not but for her yet hold.

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Ira Sukrungruang ECLIPSE, MAY 1984 I am in the school playground. My third grade class has gathered around the rocket slide and rocking horses.

We are not in a familiar place. I wait for the horses to talk.

My classmates look through science project telescopes.

We were told if we looked directly at the sun we would go blind.

There is a thrill in that knowledge. What can be so beautiful it can take our sight? Beside me, a boy I do not remember stares into the sky, stares without the shield of his telescope, stares with his lips pursed in an O, and I wonder when his eyes will catch fire.

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Ira Sukrungruang FORTUNE I donâ€&#x;t know how we arrived here, but I know there are finches flying through windows without glass, singing the blue out of the sky, and that is all right with me, one way or another.

My palms are up.

I want you to read.

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Tree Riesener THANKSGIVING let us be thankful for the way men when they make love to you support some of their weight on their arms so you don‟t get all squashed and out-of-breath and the way you can keep your gin in the freezer and it doesn‟t get solid just icy-cold and syrupy so you can put it on summer pancakes and the way slants of light from passing headlights slide around children‟s haunted rooms and make the vampires run away and the way bathtub plugs below the shining porcelain of the tub keep back the bubbling muck of our polluted earth and the way nurses cuddle you with heated blankets in those icy operating rooms and oh yes the nice clean knives that slice open your heart and the way bombers stay so high above the clouds their shadows get lost on the way down and we can pretend the engines are the drone of honey-laden summer bees and the way the priest puts god in your mouth, like a gaudy-feathered mother bird feeding a hungry baby sparrow and the way we‟re made to die in fear and pain so we have one last chance to say I‟m sorry I‟ll never do it again

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Erin Keane THE GOD OF PEONIES For Alan Michael Parker

The god of peonies garrisons all objects of desire, doles out indulgence after indulgence only when the mood strikes, which is to say: seldom. He knows data must be entered, drudgery begets drudgery, we don‟t have to like it but we‟d better get used to numb fingers at daylight‟s faint end.

Red-stained corks and unwrapped petals, our little wants soothed, his caprice generous for once, we thank. Genuflect in the bottle shop aisle, merlots upon malbecs, face distorted in the glass bend, all squished nose and giant teeth, my hand a permanent open curve.

In the flower market, every stem‟s a beckoning finger, blooms nod his whisper, answering every quiet need.

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Kim Jensen CONFESSION I gave birth to a child and placed her inside a plastic bottle then buried her beneath a foot of sand.

I understand this may seem a savage thing to do.

But I assure you— youâ€&#x;ve done it too.

And at midnight when you turn off the TV and climb beneath quilted covers when your children are snug in bed dreaming orgies of lies the endless feverish dance of selfish pleasures Sometimes it occurs to you to remember.

And you wonder whether she will live or die.

As it happens, friend Last night I did some digging And I can say this: I have no answer to your question.

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Kim Jensen HELLO? After forty days of fasting in the desert you stumbled out of the parking lot into the wilderness— rows and rows of identical cream town homes and condos crowded so close they look as though squeezed from a tube— It‟s a place where the word becomes flesh-colored stucco and tends to produce its own echo An invisible map called How to live has been built in to each interior wall.

You‟ve been sleeping on the floors of caves without reference point for so long you think it might help to follow some simple instructions This is a balcony.

Don’t fall.

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Pat Daneman HUNGER No more joyous eating, meat knifed from bone or torn with the teeth. My brotherâ€&#x;s mouth has closed for the last time. No grease embarrasses his necktie, no butter gleams on his lips or shines on the tips of his fingers. There are no crumbs to brush from his cheek as I bend for a kiss, no sauce to dab from his beard. Later, the family will laugh to see how almost every photograph of him includes a table crowded with steaming bowls, baskets of bread. His hands are delicate as he passes a plate, raises a glass. Flickering candles reflect in his eyes. He left life unfinished as he never left a meal, but he looks satisfied, lost in an after-dinner nap.

We are the ones who seem to be starving, milling before him, waiting to be called in one last time for supper, as if grace is all that stands between us and a feast.

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Michelle Morgan OYSTERS Listen closely to the text of my fingers, their sedition and light. To what I am trying to say, lodged between black lines and difficult borders. It does not come easily to me. Yesterday in the bar we shucked oysters and rubbed the sides of our thighs together under a sticky table, the friction a lapidarian heat, a Tabasco and lemon curl. I could not tell if it was on purpose, but you did not stop.

Earlier you'd stared song-heavy looks, asked me if I liked orchids.

Today my body does this instead, sloshes across a crawling ambit of un-time and non-space, aching for the meaning of gesture in a stone and the lip of a shell.

I am as guilty as you. I was paralyzed by want. For an instant of unimagined history. For a boy whose name I can barely pronounce and an old province long gone.

Avoir, bonsoir, merci— Please, please, mercy.

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Shurooq Amin CHISELED LINEN Sorceress, you‟ve been silenced for resilience earned, feminine power scorned, chilled, carved into marmoreal heritage—broom intact— washed linen sullied by the stench of rotting petroglyphs hidden in wadis; roots gnarled into dusty marble, dull as the dugong your mariner ancestors scooped in days that used to glow like phytoplankton in the mesmerizing dark waters of the Arabian Gulf; gone are the groupers and pomfrets— slimy, silvery-gray—gone the prickly cockle, the blue sea-star, Queen Sheba‟s hoopoe swishing magic over the dhow-crowded sea; scorned and silenced for your resilience, sorceress, incised pride fit together like past potsherds, seared into place by the inept hairy hands of intelligentsia and eggheads alike, smelted down, then sculpted into a grainy, shellacked stone frieze of a woman, sea-salt garnished; like a peppery furrow shell hanging a blue-striped ormer, amputated, yet unrelenting, you continue to hang linen; voiceless, still you scream; vision ruptured by years of a binding veil, still you see that inculcated injustice, that mandatory cremation of rights and dignity,

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Shurooq Amin somehow you see, sorceress, that there is a way to be free.

Note: A wadi is a dry valley in the desert.

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#6 Fiction

Puppet Crisis

by Peter Schwartz

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Willy Blake BECOMING NORMAL Malcolm woke to the ticking of the clock. Each tick churned his insides, each tick a grain of sand falling from the hour glass of his life. Outside, he saw the tops of bare trees swaying. A flock of sparrows scattered. Raindrops tapped the window.

He had been putting things off, hoping everything would be different.

Rachel would wake up happy and he content. On this morning like many others before, he rolled over to the expanse of her vacant space, an arm‟s length across a bed that stretched out of sight. She had gone to the couch sometime during the night. A backache or headache, maybe heartache.

He dressed without washing. Most of his stuff was packed. He‟d been packed and unpacked so many times before, it didn‟t mean anything anymore.

She would not stir from the couch now. They would not speak. All the words had been said. In light moments, he had admitted his shortcomings, his selfabsorbed nature, his flair for dramatics. She would chuckle, look away and wait. In sober moments when they attempted to flush things out, she‟d use his confessions against him. He would counterattack. They would shout and point at the same time. She would lock herself in the washroom. He would apologize.

She wouldn‟t answer. He would go play his guitar. Round and round, over and over.

The rain picked up. It was better that way. It put a haze on everything.

Malcolm pulled the collar of his army surplus trench coat tight and threw his guitar case among half filled boxes, wires and green garbage bags filled with his belongings. He had to push hard to get the hatchback of his little import closed. He looked towards the house one last time. There in the window, Rachel, a silhouette wrapped in the housecoat he got her last Christmas at the last minute. Her hand pressed on the glass whitened by the pressure put upon it. He couldn‟t see her face. He didn‟t want to. She was probably crying and he had seen enough of her tears. The sight of them made him numb. Endless wet little reminders of their failures together. He raised his right hand as if to take an oath. Fingers spread slightly. His hand, the reverse image of the one on the window. One last connection, the final flittering surge of an energy flow that was once electric. His fingers slowly rolled into a gentle fist as he turned away fumbling in his pocket for his keys.

Rachel listened for the car door to slam shut, for the engine to start.

Maybe this time it wouldn‟t. It always had trouble in wet weather. But the engine sputtered and fired. A couple of revs and the car pulled away, turning the corner, rattles and squeaks fading into the distance. Then, nothing but the rain and her heart pounding in her chest, in her back and in her ears. Her hand still on the window.

Later, under the unrelenting spray of her hot steamy shower her tears disappeared. She scrubbed her skin clean. “I‟ve been through this before,” she

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Willy Blake whispered to herself, “Eventually I won't think about him.” She could see herself sitting with an old friend one afternoon, drinking wine, talking and laughing. Reminiscing about yesterdays. About good times, about sexual encounters, about new ventures, about her children, about planned vacations, about when Malcolm left. *** “Free at last! Free at last! Thank god almighty, I‟m free at last!” Malcolm laughed out loud. The intro from „Born to be Wild‟ blasted through the speaker cabinets that took up half the back seat. He turned up the bass enough to shake loose anything that was not securely fastened. By now the rain was letting up and the sun was peeking through the clouds. “It‟s a sign, I know it‟s a sign!”

He pulled over a few blocks down the road and jumped out of his car. He took off his damp trench coat, whirled it over his head and tossed it into the back. He shook his longish dark wavy hair like a dog after a bath, brushed it back with his hand, then propped his prized, vintage Brooklyn Dodgers ball cap on backwards. He put on his sunglasses and caught a glimpse of himself in the car door window. Then with a glint in his eye, in a gyrating flurry, he began thrashing out passionate air guitar, singing the Steppenwolf chorus on cue, “Born to be wi-i-ild, born to be wi-i-ild!” A passing motorist honked and Malcolm flailed more intensely dropping to his knees to dramatize the effect.

Giddiness filled his insides. He shrieked like a warrior ready for battle. By this time, the gray clouds had been replaced by cottony white cumulous billows that floated over a brilliant blue sky. The sun shone in all its glory, and so did Malcolm.

Soon, Malcolm was cruising down the road bobbing to the beat of some generic rap rhythm, stretching his neck out front and then from side to side, puckering his lips, accompanying the tune with his own yelps and groans. He was in total groove mode. A tiny dark figure scurried from the curb into the street. Malcolm instinctively slammed the brakes and swerved into the next lane without looking to avoid the furry creature. He cut off a monster pick-up.

Honking, screeching, it swerved to avoid him. At the next stop light, Malcolm was totally oblivious to what just happened. Wearing a pained smile and accentuating his movements, he was centre-stage now, drumming from the steering wheel across the dashboard and back.

The monster pick-up pulled up beside him. It was full of cranky construction workers. One of them hung out the window from above and shouted down, “Hey dickwod where‟d you learn to drive. Same place you got that shit music?”

“Fuck you!” Malcolm snapped waggling his middle finger.

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Willy Blake “I‟d rip your fucking head off but I‟m working,” the worker said and then he spat on Malcolm‟s windshield. The workers all laughed and the truck peeled away.

Feeding on rage, Malcolm spewed expletives, stepped on the clutch, shifted into second, floored his vibrating compact and jerked forward. The truck disappeared out of sight just as Malcolm jammed the stick into a reluctant third gear. His sunglasses fell into his lap. His car coughed and chugged before coasting to a stop. Dark smoke seeped out from under the hood. Cars honked all around him.

Malcolm bounded on to the road and slammed the door of his car, “Up yours!” he barked pumping both middle fingers relentlessly at the long gone truck, at the motorists who made gestures as they pulled around and passed him, at the people who laughed while waiting at the bus stop.

“What are you assholes looking at?” he muttered as he popped the hood.

The smoke cleared, but a strong smell of burned oil and rubber lingered. A syrupy fluid oozed out from below and snaked to the curb. Malcolm looked across the road to a gas station. He sighed, then turned to the people at the bus stop, “Hey sorry about that. I kinda lost it for a second. Can somebody help me push this thing over to the garage?”

Nobody moved. Then the bus pulled up. *** A self portrait. She was sinking below the surface. Rachel took one last pass at her canvas, touched up some shreds of golden light that glinted off ripples in dark waters, then rested her paint brush on her easel and cleaned her fingers with a rag.

She flopped into the couch to admire her work, stretched out her bare legs from beyond her bathrobe resting them among the heap of books, sketchpads and half-filled cups of herb tea and such that populated a long upturned wooden crate. She pulled the turbaned towel from her head and threw it to the side. Her full mane of dark locks fell past her shoulders. She reached for the black decaf that was already cold. One last cringing slurp, a deep sigh.

“So now what?”

She picked at dead skin around her finger nails, sucking on the thumb where it had started to bleed. Examining its imperfections, Rachel thought about where she could chew next. A sunbeam streamed in through a crack in the curtains and the charm of dust particles floating illuminated in the late morning light put a spell on her. Her mind wandered.

“It‟s funny how you hardly ever see that dust, but it‟s always there.”

A cigarette? She could smoke whenever, now that Malcolm was gone. “No more how can I kiss you if your breath stinks,” she thought, “it‟s funny how my breath didn‟t stink when he was hot for me. No more long sermons about

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Willy Blake smoking my life away, blah, blah, blah. Geezus, he could go on.” How does sweet talk turn to advice, infatuation to precaution, passion to pressure?

Another sigh. Her mind wandered some more.

She looked around the room, felt in between the cushions of the couch and in behind her. No luck. “I don‟t really feel like a cigarette anyways. Maybe, I‟ll quit in spite of the bastard.” Rachel sneered. The levitating dust bits in the sunbeam swirled. Her mind raced. “Yeah, maybe I‟ll move to Greenwich Village, get all pierced and tattooed and do sidewalk art for a living.” She blurted out loud, “Who‟s cool now Malcolm?”

“No, no wait,” she mused, “I‟m in a tent, hunched over on my cot, sweating like a pig, scribbling out a postcard. Hey Malcolm, how‟s it going?

Thought I‟d drop you a line. Let you know how I‟m doing. I‟m here in the African Rainforest teaching English to the Bakongos. Just got over a lifethreatening bout of malaria. The tsetse flies are humongous. Gotta run. Drop me a line some time. Love Rachel.” Pleased with herself, Rachel gazed off into a corner of the room savoring her dreamy hypotheticals and then like a jack-inthe-box, popped up out of the couch.

She could see herself jumping out of a taxi, carrying nothing but two hand bags, heading for departures, the sound of jets overhead, her flowered sari flowing in the rush created by her hurried and purposeful paces. “Rachel!”

Malcolm calls out. In faded denim, unshaven with straggly hair, he‟s playing guitar. A burning cigarette is propped between strings of the peghead. A few coins are sprinkled in the guitar case laid open on the sidewalk below him.

“Malcolm! Wow, nice to see you, but I can‟t stop to talk. I‟m late for my plane.”

“What are you doing? Where are you going?” he spews hurriedly, “I‟ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

With an air of destiny, she gazes deep into his eyes and says, “I‟m off to Bangladesh. They‟re building a school for leper orphans and I‟ve been asked to oversee the project. It‟s something I‟ve always wanted to do, Malcolm. But here, let me give you some money. I won‟t be needing this there.” She would reach into her purse, toss coins into his guitar case and then with arm outstretched towards him say, “Shalom!”

She found herself back on the couch. She gnawed on her thumb nail some more, picking at skin where there wasn‟t any. “I guess, I‟d have to learn Bangladeshi,” she thought. Another sigh. Her gaze shifted to the floating illuminated dust in the sunbeam. She stood up again, focus panning to her art on the easel. There she had one hand below the surface of the water, the other reaching up, half out. The eyes. So wide. Longing. Lost. Sinking. Rachel shuddered and her body stiffened. She swallowed hard, turned to the wall and pounded it as she cried, “This is bullshit.” She slid down the wall and curled up into a ball..

The door bell rang.

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Willy Blake *** Malcolm shifted back and forth on a wobbly old vinyl chair trying to refresh the blood flow to his buttocks. His neck was cramped from the twist required to view a small mute TV that was propped up in the upper corner of the grungy gas station waiting room. A chubby lady in sweatpants and ski jacket jumped out of her chair. “Kill the son-of-a-bitch!” she chortled as one behemoth body slammed another and fell on him for the final count. Malcolm nodded and smiled in courteous agreement, then got up to search between the letters of the store front window. His car had finally been brought in for a „look-see'. He bent down to check out a clerk swamped with oil stained invoices, coffee cups and food remnants. He was on the phone, but glanced over at Malcolm for half a second before pretending he wasn‟t there. Malcolm tapped on the glass.

“Hold on there buddy,” the man said and went on talking for a while before resting the phone on his chest and turning to Malcolm, “Yep?” “I was wondering about my car. You said it would be twenty minutes, but I‟ve been here almost two hours.”

“You‟re driving the old ah…” He shuffled his papers around. “Oh yeah, shouldn‟t be too long now, buddy.” The man used his oblique glare to direct Malcolm back to the waiting area.

“Ah, okay if I use the phone?” Malcolm asked. Turning away as Malcolm spoke, the man pointed with his pen to a telephone booth outside.

“Hello Mom? It‟s Malcolm?”

“Malcolm, I haven‟t heard from you for a while. I was worried about you.

Have you been eating properly?” the tired familiar voice answered.

“Yeah sure, how‟s it going with you? How‟s Ronnie?”

“Oh fine, I‟m just getting ready to put in my shift and Ronnie‟s napping on the couch. He bowled a 265 last night.”

“Nice, nice. Anyways, the reason I‟m calling is, I was wondering if I could, ah, stay over for a few nights. You see I‟m a little short on cash and Rachel and I, we kind of split up?”

“You what? Oh, she sounded like such a nice girl. What happened?”

“Well, you know how it is? So what do you think?”

“Oh Malcolm, I would if I could, but my place is so small. You know that.”

“I don‟t need much Mom. I‟d sleep on the couch and keep out of your way.”

“I know dear, but Ronnie likes to lie there and watch TV and he‟s still looking for work, so I don‟t think it‟s a good idea right now, honey. Why don‟t you call your father?”

“Yeah, I guess I should. I‟ll leave him a message.”

There was a long pause as Malcolm peered out the dirty, scratched window. The smell of urine seemed more apparent now. He opened the booth door and could see his car being backed out of the garage bay.

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Willy Blake “I better go, Mom. I‟ll talk to you soon.”

“Okay sweetheart. I love you. And don‟t wait so long before you call again.”

Back at the sliding glass of the station office window, Malcolm bent down and looked in.

“It ain‟t good my friend,” the grumpy clerk said, “Your engine‟s toast.

You‟re looking at about fifteen hundred for a rebuilt, that‟s if we can find one.” “$1500?” Malcolm‟s head swirled. Where was he going to get that kind of cash. “I guess I could call Rachel,” he thought, “maybe not.” He reached into his pocket and fingered his last thirty-seven dollars and fifty-one cents. He‟d counted it several times while waiting. Then out loud to the clerk, he said, “Sure, go ahead, fix it.”

He got his key, unlocked his car, pulled out his guitar case and a few essentials, gave his key back and headed downtown.

“Born to be w-i-i-ild!” He couldn‟t get that tune out of his head. *** A sketch in black and white. Fetal rocking, back and forth, back and forth. Rachel cocooned in her spongy, foggy gloom. Her only comfort.

The door bell again, followed by thumping. A determined fist on the rickety window pane of an aluminum door in a used-to-be nice townhouse development.

“Rachel! Rachel! Are you home?” A familiar voice.

Rachel raised her head. Puffy wet eyes squinting in the late morning sunshine.

“Rachel, if you‟re in there girl, open the freakin‟ door! Come on!”

“Cindy,” Rachel murmured behind a faded smile. She wiped her tears and snot with the back of one hand and the drool on her chin with the palm of the other, then both hands on to her lap and the sides of her house coat. Using the wall for support, she stood. “I‟m coming. Just a second.”

More banging at the door. A couple of snivels. She scanned the living room for some Kleenex. A wipe across her face with one sleeve, then the other.

“Wait a second. I‟m coming.” She ran down the hall, pulled the front door slightly open, then pivoted and escaped up the stairs into the bathroom.

Light poured in with Cindy. Her spiked black hair, pink streaks, heavy eye-liner, leather, studs, rings and things. It was her flavor of the month.

“Rachel? Where the hell are ya? You don‟t answer the phone?” Her voice ascending as she yelled. But the emptiness. Malcolm‟s usual scattering of sneakers, gone. An open closet door. Naked hangers.

Upstairs, Rachel faced the mirror. Puffy slits hid her beautiful big brown eyes. She turned the tap and cupped cold water, splashing it on her face over and over. Coolness soothed her warm, swollen skin.

“When did he leave?”

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Willy Blake Rachel looked up from the sink to Cindy‟s reflection in the mirror. “This morning.” Rachel said and reached blindly for a towel. There was none there so she made her way to the bedroom. Cindy followed.

“You saw it coming.”

“Sure I did, but it still happened.”

Cindy stepped closer. “You can‟t have it both ways? Did Malcolm know?”

“Why not, and I‟m not sure.”

Cindy closer still. The music played. The words stopped. Cindy brushed Rachel‟s hair away from her face. Kissed her eyes. Her lips. Rachel loosened her house coat and it fell to the floor. Cindy ran her fingers down Rachel‟s soft white shoulder to her firm, pert breast, down to her nipple. They spent the afternoon together.

Later, the two lovers laid on their backs side by side staring at the ceiling. “Ya know,” Rachel pauses to take a suck from the joint Cindy just passed her, “I just wish I could be, like, normal.”

Cindy flipped pictures through her mind as if she were turning the pages of her family album.

“Normal? Oh yeah.”

Rachel continued, “Babies, a nice house with a front lawn and a bird fountain in the garden. Thanksgiving and Christmas with family and summers at the cottage and a husband who loves you, treats you good.”

“So you shacked up with an unemployed musician?”

“I thought he was the one. He could change.”

“Don‟t go down that road, sister. You‟re sounding like the airheads I went to high school with. Or have you been into another Leave it to Beaver rerun marathon.”

“What‟s wrong with that show?”

“Give me a fucking break, girl. In real life Mrs. Clever is on 50 mills of Paxil daily or whatever they took back then, and likely getting topped up a little extra cream from the milkman. Wally and the Beave sure didn‟t look like her husband. Whuz his name, Walter? Ward, whatever. Yeah, late nights at the office? Bullshit! He was gayer than that exercise dude. You know the out of shape guy with the frizzy hair. My mom used to love him. Never got off the couch once my dad left. Shit, she died on that goddamn thing. You want normal?” Cindy laughed a sad laugh.

The part of Rachel that lay with Cindy felt a little ashamed for even thinking what she thought, but the part of Rachel that said it still was enchanted by the possibilities and wonder of normal. She turned to Cindy and put her arm across her chest and cuddled up.

Cindy kissed Rachel‟s arm and held it close. “So I‟ve got to work tonight, but what are you doing tomorrow. We should go out and get so fucking hammered,” Cindy suggested.

“Can‟t, my parents are expecting us, well me, for supper.”

“They don‟t know?”

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Willy Blake “About you and me? My parents would have simultaneous shit-fits on the spot?”

Cindy rolled her eyes, “You and Malcolm, doofus!”

“No way, I‟ll just say he had a gig out of town. Hell, my dad still refers to him as Paul.”

“But Paul‟s been history for a year now?”

“I know, but my dad can‟t keep up,” Rachel said, “probably doesn‟t want to. Besides, my parents have never actually seen Malcolm yet. I‟ve been it putting off until we settled in.”

“Oh, you‟re settled in now,” Cindy said. *** Malcolm was back in the sunshine. Set up among a string of sidewalk cafes and downtown shops, coins and the odd bill dropped into his open guitar case as he strutted back and forth strumming, crooning and strutting. Anything from old rockin‟ classics to familiar sounding originals. When he played, all his Rachel, car and money troubles turned inside out. Today, Malcolm would not be denied.

Taken by his own reflection in the shop windows, he‟d posed for himself and every pretty girl that passed, throwing in a bit of the Elvis lip and pelvic thrust for timely effects. Some ladies would stay and watch for a song or two, sometimes giggling, smiling big and dropping cash in his guitar case before waving good-bye.

There was one gorgeous young thing who‟d been and gone and been again. He‟d seen her standing across the street watching with friends, then alone and now sitting on the curb of a store front a couple of doors down. A sweet siren, Malcolm was drawn to her. Her flowing black sleeveless dress and long flaxen hair fluttered to one side in the timid muggy air.

“I‟m gonna take a break in a minute, but first I want to dedicate this last tune to the pretty thing sitting right over there,” Malcolm said pointing his guitar headstock in her direction.

He began strumming powerful, rhythmic chords that got the warmed and swelling crowd into a collective pulse. He sucked in the energy and returned the favor singing and playing with a passion, he‟d never experienced before. He turned and slowly strode to the girl. He kneeled and kept playing. When he stood again, she stood with him. Then she spun into the crowd dancing madly.

Her hair was wild in the sunshine. People stepped back, some spilling on to the street to give her room to flail herself in tribal euphoria. Soon others joined in.

There was even this blue suit caught in the fever, pumping his attaché case over his head. It looked like a scene out of the movie “Fame”. Traffic clogged and horns were a plenty.

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Willy Blake Later when the crowd cleared, she stood over him as he shoved bills and coins into his pockets. His pants sagged from the weight. “That was so cool,” she said to Malcolm.

As he stood, he panned up trinkets and charm bracelets on pale white skin and a couple of funky tattoos on her neck, some symbols he didn‟t recognize. She brushed the hair away from her face revealing crazy big blue mischievous eyes and pouty lips that took his breath away. When he got closer, he saw that she was younger than he‟d thought, but old enough, and the sexual surge put a lump in his throat.

“It‟s silly, but I feel like I know you,” he confessed.

“Yeah, me too,” she said, “but you know something else?”

“What‟s that?”

“I don‟t know your name?”

“Malcolm, and you?”

“Felicity.”

“Felicity,” he repeated, “that‟s a song. Hey, you hungry?”

They sat at an outdoor café until dark and Malcolm rambled on. “I could be anywhere. I just close my eyes and concentrate. I feel myself leaving the floor. The deeper I get into the trance, the higher I rise until I‟m floating around looking down.”

“Oh, that is so freaky. You‟re not going to believe this, but I do that too. I swear!” she said. Malcolm wasn‟t sure about her until she dove deep into his eyes, slipped off her sandal and stroked her bare foot against the side of his calf.

“This is crazy. I feel like I‟ve died and gone to heaven,” Malcolm said reaching out across the table taking Felicity‟s hands and putting his lips to them. She smiled, then looked away. He went on, “Funny, I hardly know anything about you but something inside tells me this is right.”

She gave him that diving deep into his eyes look again and leaned forward. She kissed him tenderly and then with her hot breath running straight to his groin, she whispered in his ear, “Come with me, Malcolm.”

In a moment, they were gone. *** In the den, Rachel and her dad, Henry faced the forty-two inch plasma screen as they spoke. Henry surfed aimlessly with the remote.

“Enough all ready,” Norma, Rachel‟s mother clamored.

“Oh, Jeopardy!” Henry stopped clicking.

“That Alex Trebek still looks good,” Norma said.

“How come game show hosts always look the same, even after twenty years?” Rachel asked.

“Lighting, make up, face lifts,” Henry muttered.

“Oh so suddenly you‟re Mr. Hollywood producer,” Norma snapped.

24

Willy Blake “Come on guys, let‟s keep it positive. That was an awesome dinner, Mom,” “Awesome dinner? You don‟t let me make you chicken or roast beef anymore? Now you‟re a vegan-shmegan. I had to buy a pakki cookbook to find something you‟d eat.”

“Mom, please don‟t say pakki. I don‟t like it.”

“Sorry! You know what it used to say on the beaches of Toronto when your grandmother was alive. No Dogs or Jews Allowed.”

From the TV, a contestant on the answer-question show said, “Sickness and Health for a thousand.”

Alex Trebek read from the game square, “It's the term for any substance that causes an allergic reaction.”

“Norma!” Henry shouted.

Rachel exploded with laughter.

“Mr. Comedian, you‟re not!” Norma shot back, “How about a word for never gets his lazy, retired ass off the couch?”

Henry waved his hand at his wife and mumbled, “How „bout a word for kiss my ….”. He kept watching the TV trying to answer each question before the contestants. Then came a commercial break. “So what did you say your Paul was doing, sweety?”

“His name is Malcolm, Dad, remember?”

“Same guy?”

“Different guy, Dad and I told you already, he‟s got a gig. You know he‟s a musician and he got a job out of town, so he couldn‟t make it tonight.”

“Musician, gig. What‟s wrong with man, job? You can‟t find yourself a nice doctor? Chartered accountant? I‟ll settle for a teacher. Leah married a lawyer, they just bought a house down the street and she looks pregnant. And are you sure everything‟s going to work with this Malcolm of yours?” Norma queried, “Look at me, my Rachel.”

“Leave her alone,” Henry groaned, “she‟ll be fine.” Jeopardy was over and Henry started clicking again.

“No Henry, not the news. It‟s too depressing!”

“Hold your horses, I just want to check for the weather.”

The TV announcer was in midstream, “And in local news, “Mourners at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in midtown Toronto were in shock when they made the disturbing discovery of a grizzly homicide this morning.”

“Change it!”

“Wait!”

“The naked and beheaded remains of a male in his late twenties appears to have been the object of a disturbing Satanic cult sacrifice ritual. The victim tied up spread eagle over a grave was stabbed multiple times and suffered numerous body mutilations. The words, “Hate is Love” were smeared in blood over the grave‟s tombstone.” An autopsy is being performed. And although the victim‟s face was beyond recognition, an artist‟s composite drawing has been

25

Willy Blake rendered.” It appeared on the TV screen. “If you believe you may know the identity of this man please contact local police.”

“That‟s enough!” Norma groaned, “Are you happy now? Look at your daughter.”

A rush of heat swarmed over Rachel and sweat dripped down her forehead, her back and the insides of her arms. Stunned, barely able to breathe, she tried to make light of it. “Oh, it‟s okay,” she said in a weak voice, “it‟s just that stuff like that…” She took a deep breath, “upsets me. I think I ate too much anyways. Excuse me.” Then she ran to the washroom barely making it to the toilet bowl in time. Everything came up.

That night, Rachel called police from her parents‟ house. *** It was raining the day of Malcolm‟s funeral, so everyone was in a rush to get away after the ceremony. Rachel remained, mesmerized. Cindy waited with her.

“It was like this the day he left.” Rachel said “Yeah,” Cindy sighed.

“I just can‟t help but think I‟m responsible. Like there‟s something I could have done.”

“What?”

“I don‟t know. Said something, done something. If we would have stayed together, maybe this wouldn‟t have happened.”

“Fate has its own plans, girl.”

Rachel looked up at the heavens. The clouds were separating and the rain was letting up. “I just want to live a normal life,” she lamented.

Cindy said, “Yeah, me too.”

The sun peeked through the clouds.

“Hey, is that a rainbow?” Rachel asked.

Cindy studied the sky for a moment, “Nah.” They turned and walked away.

26

Anna Clark THE MAKINGS OF A FAIRY TALE There was a boy who lived with his mother in Boston. They lived in an old narrow brick house that looked a lot like every other house that lined the block. He liked it pretty well.

The boy himself was a brown-haired bookish sort, legs skinny and straight as fence posts, crooked teeth, and a tendency to repeat and repeat big words. Ecclesiastical was a favorite when he was smaller. Lately, it‟d been furtive and poltergeist.

“Careful where you put your keys,” he warned his mother. “I think we‟ve got a poltergeist. And they‟re furtive, you know. Poltergeists are very furtive.”

“Please,” his mother would say, at last. “Give a mind a rest.”

The boy liked to write his words almost as much as he liked to speak them. He exaggerated the vertical strokes and cursive curls of his letters so that his inky notebooks resembled, or so he thought, the ancient script of legends and gospels. To complete the effect, he stained his pages with tea— dipped them in a simmering pot, dried them, and delighted in the paper‟s browning and crinkling.

But, finally, his mother came into the kitchen to find puddles on the floor and soggy pages spread out on the countertop. The mother grounded the boy from playing in the kitchen. And no library for a week!

The boy went to the library anyhow. He told his mother he was staying after school for a group science project. His mother believed him—why wouldn‟t she?

When the boy returned to their old brick house at a telling 5:15 pm— exactly fifteen minutes after the library closed, which was located exactly fifteen minutes away—the mother asked how the science project was going. The boy said it was fine. He said they were studying the solar system, because it sounded like a science project-y thing to study. His fifth grade class did the solar system last fall.

The mother turned to her son and said, “Huh. My favorite planet was always Neptune. It‟s not the biggest, or the furthest away, it doesn‟t have rings, and it‟s not the hottest or the coldest or the prettiest. It‟s nobody‟s favorite but mine.”

“Huh,” the boy said. His backpack, heavy with books, thudded to the floor.

“I told that to your father once,” the mother said. “He said his favorite was Earth, because it was his home.”

She paused, and then added, “It seemed like he got the right answer somehow.”

The father comes from a wealthy family. On dreary days, the son called himself an heir. But the money just meant that the father had to work only

27

Anna Clark once in a great while, which suited him just fine. At heart, the father was a wanderer. A nomad, he liked to call himself. He took trips of hitchhiking and serendipity—those were his words—because that was the way to connect most deeply with people all over the world, all kinds.

One night the boy had a lovely dream, but it skittered away when he opened his eyes. His mother was sitting beside him on the bed. It was very early in the morning. The light that filled the room was malleable and liquid, an infantile light not ready to be sharpened into day.

It took a moment for the boy to realize the solidity of his mother‟s body, her breaths moving the mattress just so. When he did, it shocked him like a bee sting. He sat up with a start. He gasped, “What‟s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” his mother whispered. She reached over and smoothed a lock of the boy‟s hair away from his face. Warm fingers.

“Everything‟s perfect.”

“Good,” the boy said. He flopped back to his pillow and closed his eyes.

He felt the mother staring. His skin bristled.

“I‟d like you to join me. On an adventure.”

The mother‟s voice sounded almost childish. „Adventure‟ was a word his father would use. In his mother‟s mouth, it was false, a verbal sort of dress up.

The mother leaned over and whispered into her son‟s ear. The drowsy boy understood that the two of them were leaving the old brick house in Boston. But he didn‟t catch where they were going, and he was afraid to ask.

The son asked, “And Dad? What‟ll happen when he comes back?”

His mother smiled strangely, lips curved up like tiny hooks.

“When he comes back, we won‟t be here. It‟ll surprise him, sure, but it‟s nothing he can complain about, can he? Can he?”

Once, years ago, the father took his son with him on an adventure. The boy was small then, so it was only a three-week trip. But it was a grand tour.

On the road, his father turned poetic: He said he wanted his son to be in beautiful places so a bit of the beauty would bleed out of them and into him. It was his birthright to be made of beautiful things, his father told him as he fitted a miniature backpack on the boy‟s shoulders. Real things. In the Grand Tetons, water ran clear as a song. Heaps of red clay covered graves in a Wyoming reservation cemetery. They tiptoed up to the graves, sniffed the shockingly bright flowers, and toyed with the trinkets set before the crosses— icons, prayer cards, rag dolls, plastic toys. They imagined stories about the buried people.

Headed back towards home, they watched a meteor shower from the top of a sand dune in southwest Michigan. The father told his son that he now had a thousand wishes in the bank for having seen so many falling stars at once, and the boy believed him.

“A thousand wishes?” the son asked. He realized he might test a new word: “We can make a myriad wishes?”

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Anna Clark “Or one really big wish,” his father said.

They were lying on their backs, their heads resting on crumpled-up jackets, chins tilted towards the sky, not looking at each other. Their arms touched. The boy made like he didn‟t notice.

“A myriad of wishes on the stars come together and make one superwish?”

“That‟s right.”

“Guaranteed to come true.”

“It‟s a sure thing.”

The boy peeked at his father‟s form, now a solid black shadow.

“What are you going to wish for?”

“If I told you, it wouldn‟t come true.”

Back in Boston, it was never dark enough to see stars. But the boy knew they were there. It was a powerful secret, like knowing there‟s a genie in a tarnished oil lamp; like knowing there‟s a truth-telling spirit in a mirror. On field trips to the planetarium, the boy would eye his classmates with their hinged-back heads and slack jaws, and he felt an electric certainty of having seen something more beautiful than any of them had ever known. While the others measured their constellations with a screen of plaster pockmarked by tiny lights, the boy had faced the galaxy straight on. He‟d felt the heat of a thousand meteors. He‟d seen Mars—his father had pointed it out to him, the planet as red as a drop of blood.

The mother and the boy knew he‟d keep coming back, because he kept coming back. Complete with huge sloppy kisses and traveling stink that forced his son to inhale through his mouth. When he kissed the mother hello, he‟d often cry himself, and she too, of course, and for days they couldn‟t stop touching each other—always at least a finger interlaced with a finger at the dinner table. He cooked all the meals when he was home—strange sizzling dishes, expensively spiced vegetables. He used recipes from all over the world, and while they ate, he talked about the people he ate with when he‟d first tasted each dish. So many people! The boy imagined that his father just kept running into the same old man, who put on elaborate disguises and accents, a false mustache or a bulky shawl, all to fool his father into thinking he‟d met everybody in the world; an elaborate joke.

The father always—in a few weeks, in a few months—he always left again. He left again, always, and after he left again, he sent letters, as usual, but the mother and the boy never knew where to send their own letters, so they didn‟t write any.

The mother worked at a bank. She had responsibilities; people reported to her. She couldn‟t just pick up and leave to go „traipsing,‟ as she put it, and besides she didn‟t want to. That‟s what she said, but the boy suspected that the father didn‟t ask her to join him. When the boy returned from his three-

29

Anna Clark week adventure—dropped off, really, giving him the distinct sense that he‟d been humored—his mother scrubbed dishes and loudly ran the tap while the boy tried to find the right words to describe the places he‟d been.

“I saw a myriad of beautiful things,” he said. “Everywhere! I saw a myriad of lucid things.”

His mother cried, but already the young boy was tired of seeing his mother cry.

The old brick house in Boston sold quickly to a family with three toothy children and parents who didn‟t want to commute to their eminently normal publishing jobs. The family was happy with the house, and happy with the furniture included in the sale.

Every day after school, the boy and the mother tied bandanas around their hair, pulled on old shirts, and went through drawers and cupboards.

They made piles of things to keep, things to give away, and things that were the father‟s, which the mother intended to give to his sister until he returned. His sister had just been widowed and had space that, it seemed, she desperately wanted to fill. She thought she was storing her brother‟s things because the family was redecorating the old brick house. She didn‟t ask questions. She seemed to have problems of her own.

Among the things delivered to her house were the father‟s books—ragged, the pages thin from the oils of his fingers. Also, there was an orange and red blanket from Central America; several knit scarves and a set of mittens an old woman in Oklahoma made for him; a pair of boots so worn through they were useless for anything but hiking to the corner store; and his notebooks, which, the son noticed with joy, were as painstakingly inked-over as the boy‟s own. He stole one of his father‟s notebooks, and also one of his bright socks that had no match.

The boy read his father‟s notebook: “I’m more alive during night than day, when, unfortunately, fewer people are around to testify to it,” it said. “I do things slow: walking, speaking, dancing, kissing, mourning.”

What did it mean? There were no dates anywhere.

Quite a bit of household stuff was given away or sold. We don‟t need much, after all, the mother repeated. Too much stuff crowds out the good things in life. Sometimes the mother cried, and the boy didn‟t know what to say. Sometimes the mother imagined out loud what would happen: she imagined the father clomping up the steps of his house to find the new family there instead of his wife and son. She imagined that throat-closing moment of shock. Boy, is he in for a taste of his own, she said.

She wanted to linger as a ghost, the son could tell, for that one moment.

She wanted to see his muscles going slack with Horror. His face breaking with sorrow. His guilty True Love for her, them both. That‟s what she wanted.

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Anna Clark “Help me stay awake. Help me stay. Stay, help awake me.”

Then the father came back.

It was March, and still snowing. The boy met him at the door; he just happened to be in the bathroom when he heard the front lock turn. They hugged. The son felt his sleepy heat leave his own body for his father‟s.

We’re leaving you, too, the boy almost said. The words skipped at his lips.

We’re leaving for something else. He opened his mouth, he would tell him the truth, but then the father put his finger to his lips in honor of their quiet. The boy swallowed; the words shook in his belly.

Where‟s your mother? the father mouthed.

Sleeping.

And he pointed. The mother had fallen asleep on the couch that night.

She was limp and blanketed, her head angled strangely among the cushions.

They could hear her inhales.

The young boy watched his father heave out of a backpack. He watched him pull wool mittens off his hands and drop them to puddle on the floor. He pulled out of his coat, he plucked his hat off his head. He loosened his shoelaces and toed the boots off his feet. He saw his thick and mismatched socks, hand knit by someone somewhere. The father padded across the room and knelt before the mother‟s sleeping body, as if he were before an altar or a coffin. His palm moved slowly over the mother‟s face, never touching it, but following its curve and angle, the ghost of a caress. And then he took his hand back and he watched her dreams. The son knew that he saw not only his dreaming mother, but her actual dreams. He sensed his father‟s stare looking straight through his mother‟s thin eyelids. The young boy wondered what he saw. He wondered if his father saw nightmares, or beautiful things, or himself.

He wondered if his mother‟s dreams surprised him. He wondered if his mother was waiting for him, there.

They did love each other.

In the morning he kissed his wife hello, and she cried, of course. He took a hot shower; she trimmed his brown beard by the kitchen sink. She swept up her long hair with a glittery clip and the boy caught his mother pinching a blush into her pale cheeks when his father left the room to make a phone call.

The father mostly spent his time experimenting in the kitchen, sending his son to the grocery store for ingredients, and he told so many stories. The father didn‟t notice the boxes and bags lining the rooms. We’re leaving, the boy thought, you, and you won’t know how to find us.

The father called the closets messy, when really they were half-sorted.

“Somebody‟s let this slide,” he said when he went to retrieve a memento box he kept in the back closet. He stepped between trashbags full of clothes that were set to disappear soon. “Is this your job?” he asked his son. “To keep it tidy in here?”

31

Anna Clark “No.” “Even though nobody sees the closet except us doesn‟t mean we shouldn‟t have some self-respect, you know. The hidden places matter too.”

“We‟re leaving,” the boy said. “Mom and I are absconding, and we‟re never going to see this motherfucking closet again.”

The father didn‟t often raise his voice to his son, but hearing the young boy use a curse word so casually repelled him. He pushed close to the boy‟s face and with a pointed index finger, he admonished him harshly with the usual paternalisms: Don’t let me hear that ugly word again. Only stupid people resort to words like that—stupid people.

Shortly later, they met around the dinner table. The son listened to tales about the prettiest weathered churches in Peru. And swimming in a place in Lake Michigan where his father saw the Independence Day firecracker celebrations of a dozen small towns all at once, sparks exploding up and down the curving shoreline of the state. Oh!—And of eating cactus (sticky and bright green, he said) on the Mexico border with a family that helped him with his Spanish. He loved the old man in that family best and called him his Mexican Grandfather. He had so many stories.

He stayed twelve days. Towards the end of his time at the old brick house in Boston, while the father was packing up his things again, the boy‟s mother asked her husband why he hated Boston. This is where we grew up, she said.

All our friends are here. The father shook his head and said nothing.

“Aren‟t you going to answer me? Or even when you are here, am I going to have to deal with this sick silence?”

“You already know what I‟d say.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I‟d say that I‟m not going to say no to the beauty all over the world for Boston.”

“You talk like there‟s nothing beautiful here.”

“You want me to say that you’re what‟s beautiful here, don‟t you?”

“Your son,” the mother said, sweeping his arm towards the young boy, who was sitting cross-legged on the couch and pretending to read. “Your son’s here.”

“And I love him too.”

On a hot day, early in the summer, the mother and the son left the old narrow brick house in Boston forever. The boy didn‟t tell anyone from school that he wouldn‟t be back in September. He didn‟t know who to tell. He hummed on the train ride across the city. His mother‟s face had no color.

Much later, miles away, in a new and undoubtedly beautiful place, the young boy wrote a fairy tale. It was about an heir who lived near the salt ocean.

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Anna Clark The ocean held a thousand souls, the bodies of drowned men and women with their one wish—to breathe—stuck forever inside their sealed throats. The wishes colored the ocean like dye, turning it a beautiful shade of blue no one had ever before seen.

The heir lived in a brick castle near the ocean, and all day he‟d stare out the turret window, watching the waves, until his own eyes turned as blue as the water full of wishes. It wasn‟t enough. It wasn‟t enough. One day, the heir abandoned his rich kingdom to live a more beautiful life. Trees, rivers, bare feet, soil. Real things, not wishes. It was a matter of destiny. What isn’t a matter of destiny, come to think of it? The heir abandoned his fortune and was now a wandering warrior. A peripatetic prince. A desolate peripatetic.

The boy wrote his fairy tale in beautiful black ink, long lines and full, swooping capital letters, and some pictures too, of the beautiful places that now surrounded him, and himself sitting in them. He took his mother‟s matches and burned the edges a bit, like a true gospel, but this time his mother did not come into the kitchen and stop him. The boy accidentally burned his entire story. He cried over the smoky black flakes that had been his tale, but not without a sense of the pretty melancholia of it all.

33

#6 Creative Nonfiction

Abstract Two

by Sue Turner

34

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt POMPEII She wanders the empty streets, her feet, stumbling on the edges of the smooth round stones, her heels almost caught in the ruts in the road, engraved by wagon wheels from so many centuries ago.

She steps over a threshold, into the empty space of a house, the stones at the door almost curved to the concave places of the heart, to the murmurs of the flesh. She stands in this center of the earth waiting for the woman to bend over an amphora of water or wine, waiting for a soft white robe to press past her as the woman prepares a feast of squab.

What will be left when she is gone? Will they find a white translucent shell and say she was there. Will they find a baby picture of a curly haired auburn boy holding a sunburst daisy up in the air? His copper hair speckled with light. Will they say he must be hers? Will they find strands of gray hair against a light blue rumpled sheet, or the imprint of a body in a flattened well of a chair, open copies of books, torn pages, a chipped tooth in an egg cup, or a scratched drawing of a blue swirling lobster on thin yellowed paper? Will they find a stray pearl or a thick maroon velvet ribbon? Stained underwear or perhaps a crumbled note amidst the ruins?

Will they discover the accusatory words drawn from memory or the terrible dreams of a girl who wakes up at night unable to breathe, lost in the serpentine alleys of a medieval city by the sea, un able to hear the rush of water against stone, unable to find the street that leads to the harbor, the path that opens into a wash of blue light?

Or will they find nothing. Just the outlines of a house.

She is the center of an empty world, the brick and mortar foundations still intact. She hears the open-mouthed howls of the dead as the lava and pumice and gases and stones fill the sky and fall like a thick sheet of flame, a rain of fire. In the quiet she hears their groans. She sees their bodies petrified in stone. The child grasping for her motherâ€&#x;s arm. The old man caught in sleep, his hands covering his eyes. The cowering young men, curled in almost fetal positions, and the old ones bent in a crouch, hiding their faces between their knees. She sees the limbs of the dead, caught by surprise, in contorted angles of pain. She imagines a burning that turns you inside out, out of yourself, out of your seared flesh.

She sees the flames, the burning, and turns away. Strolling down the Via Abondanza, she walks in and out of broken houses, listening for the echoes of past lives in this deserted city. The windows of the half-shorn foundations gape like toothless mouths. Occasionally signs of life remain: the basin for the laundress, the grinding stone, the blackened loaf of bread, the water gurgling from a fountain, the spout surrounded by the mouth of a womanâ€&#x;s chipped face, a horn of plenty still held in her frozen white arm.

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Jan Zlotnik Schmidt And then she stops at the threshold of another small dwelling and looks down onto a mosaic floor. And there it is: wings, chips of light blue and gray mosaic, almost floating like a cloud, drifting across the dull, darkened floor.

The bird takes shape. Long spindly legs, the wings arched, ready for flight.

The dark eye still staring into space. The bird, a translucent shadow, a glimpse of a crescent moon in the bright sky of day. She tries to define the color. Is it sea foam? A light blue mist, like the edge of the horizon at the sea? The color makes her breathe deeply. She doesnâ€&#x;t know if the bird is an ibis or a crane.

She imagines its slight cry in a bloodless sky.

And what remains of a life? A blackened egg petrified to stone. The tilt of a wing in late afternoon light.

36

Cyn Kitchen DISASTER PREPAREDNESS She anticipated it, like the second coming of Christ. She didn‟t know the day or the hour, but she sensed that you were nearing a breaking point. Your criticisms grew more harsh. Your patience wore thin. You developed a hair trigger, often raising the back of your hand to her or us kids. You spanked us with a passion, as if it felt too good to stop. You kicked her. You shoved her away when she tried to be playful. You held a knife to her throat before changing your mind and throwing it in the sink, disgusted.

She‟d been married to you long enough to identify the roiling clouds in your eyes, and experience taught her not to ignore the warning signs. She ran us kids through what-if scenarios, teaching us how to think in a crisis, what steps to take toward safety. It reminded me of the civil service drills in school, the way we would line up in the hallway, put our hands over our heads to save ourselves in the event of a nuclear holocaust.

She would test us over meals or while driving in the car, asking questions to ensure we hadn‟t forgotten, urging us to be vigilant, always at the ready. For instance, we knew that if you launched an attack in the basement we were to run upstairs to call 9-1-1, the phone furthest from the violence. If the offensive was happening in the bedroom, we had a choice of the phone in the kitchen, which offered little cover, or the phone in the basement. If it happened in the daytime we were permitted to run to a neighbor‟s. If it came like a thief in the night, her war-cry would be one word, “Help!”

Even though she‟d prepared us the best she knew how, it came as a cruel shock in the pre-dawn hours of an ordinary morning to be awakened by the siren of her voice. I sat bolt upright in bed, shocked from deep sleep to sudden wakefulness. She could have warned that the communists were coming or that the house was on fire, and it would not have inspired more panic. I was instantaneously aware of a struggle in the next bedroom. She kept sounding the alarm, “Help! Help!” I cried back, “Mom!” hoping she would tell me to go back to sleep, that I was having a bad dream. But she did not respond.

Perhaps you had your hand clamped over her mouth, or perhaps she was relieved that I was awake, able to enact our response plan, allowing her to concentrate on staying alive. I heard furniture turning over, glass breaking, bodies scuffling. Even then I thought about the tragedy of the situation, how ridiculous that someone eleven years-old should be held responsible for saving her mother‟s life. The burden was immense, and I was glad for the practice— glad that she‟d had the foresight to arm me with a strategy. I stood at my bedroom door before bolting, exposed, into the hallway and down the stairs without being spotted. As I ran I saw the two of you from the corner of my eye, on the bed, you grappling for a tighter hold, her struggling to get away.

She knew you were going to kill her. She said it was in your eyes, and she knew if she did not get away that is exactly what would happen. You could not

37

Cyn Kitchen have inhabited one more molecule of hate. You were brimming with madness and hell-bent on getting ahold of her, choking the life out of her. You lunged across the bed at her. The thick muscles of your fingers clasped around her arm in a vice hold, and she could not get away. So she started speaking in tongues. She called on the Holy Spirit, and then as if casting a Pentecostal spell she said, “I rebuke you Satan, in the name of Jesus.” I don‟t know if she really believed it would work, but it did. As soon as she said Jesus‟ name all the strength left your body. You were emptied of your wind as if you‟d been kicked in the solar-plexus, and the blood drained from your face. You went limp just long enough for her to wriggle free.

Downstairs in the family room I was dialing the phone.

“9-1-1 what is your emergency?” an official-sounding female voice said.

“My dad is beating up my mom.”

“Your dad is beating up your mom?” Her tone was suddenly laced with anguish.

“Yes,” I said. Mom had told me that was all I needed to say.

“What‟s your address honey?”

“1152 Klein Avenue.” I was careful to enunciate, so I wouldn‟t have to repeat myself. I kept waiting for you to burst into the room and catch me.

“We‟re sending a squad car right now,” she said. “He‟s not going to have his siren on, but he‟ll be there soon sweetie.”

“Thank you,” I said, and then I hung up.

My next problem was finding a place to hide until help arrived. I couldn‟t return to my room upstairs. I couldn‟t go into Tammi‟s room because little sisters know rules about staying out of older sister‟s rooms. So I retreated into the laundry room. I stood behind the door, staring at the knob, breathless, straining to hear any sound. I heard nothing. No voices, no struggle, no sirens.

I entertained the thought that you had killed her. I simmered in my hate for you, feeling helpless, trapped and longing for you to wander so far that you could never find your way back.

Suddenly the door exploded open, and you were standing before me looking feral, smelling wild, panting. You stared at me for a moment, wordless, and I wondered if I might become your punching bag. Afterall, my resemblance to Mom in face and temperament has always stirred you in a loathesome way.

Did you think for a moment that it might satisfy your hunger to beat me to hell? Did you think to ask me where she was, threaten me if I refused to speak? In one sense I was relieved to see you, because I knew if you burst through the door looking for her she‟d gotten away. But now it was me in your path, and aside from a systemic feeling of terror, I had no plan.

“Are you ok?” you asked, when you finally spoke.

I was stunned by the question. Of course I was not ok.

“Yeah,” I said.

Without another word, you turned and walked away closing the door behind you, leaving me to stand there, alone. I began to shake as warm urine

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Cyn Kitchen ran down my leg and puddled in the floor between my feet. I did not move, but stood there until I finally heard your truck engine coming to life, leaving the driveway.

I emerged from the laundry room calling for Mom. She was not upstairs, and she was not in the kitchen, and I could not find her, and I thought that perhaps she had left and not taken me with her. And then I thought perhaps she was lying somewhere, close to death, needing help, and I was not there.

When she finally crawled from the bowels of Tammi‟s closet underneath the stairs, where she‟d burrowed deep under blankets and clothes, I felt like I was watching Lazarus come forth from the tomb. It was as if my life as well as hers had been resurrected. She was whole. She was shaken, but she was intact. She sat down at the table to collect herself while I opened the front door to let the police officer inside.

Maybe her Pentecostal hocus pocus had worked. Maybe it was her careful preparation. Maybe it just wasn‟t your time to get her. I don‟t know where you went that day or what you thought or what you said to her when you spoke again, but I was profoundly saddened at 5 o‟clock when you pulled back into the drive and expected our lives to continue in the usual pattern— alternating states of silence and pandemonium—but I‟ve lived long enough to learn that even chaos comes to an end eventually. You just have to plan for it.

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#6 Contributors Dr. Shurooq Amin is a Kuwaiti Anglophone poet, an artist, a certified interior decorator, and a lecturer at Kuwait University. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing and an MA in English Literature. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Etchings (Ilura Press, Australia); Beauty/Truth: A Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry; The Cannon’s Mouth; Many Colored Brooms; Ekphrasis: A Poetry Journal; The Journal; Words-Myth: A Quarterly Poetry Journal, Miranda Literary Magazine, DMQ Review, and are forthcoming in The Rose and Thorn Literary E-Zine; Aesthetica; Pearl, Living Poets by Dragonheart Press, and Poesia.

Willy Blake willyblake.com Anna Clark’s fiction and journalism have been honored by 13 national and regional awards, including three Hopwood awards at the University of Michigan and Best News Feature from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. She maintains the literary and social justice website, ISAK and guest blog at WIMN's Voices. Her past and forthcoming publication credits include: Utne Reader, Women's eNews, Bitch Magazine; The Women's International Perspective, Clamor; Kitchen Sink; ColorLines; The Ann Arbor News; The Current; The Herald-Palladium; and What's Up Magazine, where she served as arts editor. In January 2007, she received her MFA from Warren Wilson College.

She currently works with The Center for New Words, a literary nonprofit in Cambridge, MA. Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Grand Prairie, Texas. He has been published in dozens of online magazines. Google "Jeff Crouch" to see where he's been on the internet.

Pat Daneman has published poetry in the Spoon River Poetry Review, Poem, Midwest Quarterly, Comstock Review, Pedestal Magazine, and other small magazines as well as fiction in The Indiana Review and MSS. She has a Master‟s degree in English and creative writing from Binghamton University and works as a creative director in Kansas City.

Barbara Hamby’s poetry collections include Babel (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), chosen by Stephen Dunn to win the AWP‟s Donald Hall Prize; The Alphabet of Desire (New York University Press, 1999), which won the 1998 New

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York University Press Prize in Poetry; and Delirium, which won the Vassar Miller Prize, The Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. She teaches poetry at Florida State University.

Kim Jensen is a writer who has lived and taught in France, California, and the Middle East. Her first novel about a turbulent love affair between a Palestinian exile and an American student, The Woman I Left Behind, was published in 2006 by Curbstone Press, and her poetry manuscript The Red Rafters of the Word Room was a finalist in Fordham University's Poets Out Loud competition.

In 2001, Kim won the Raymond Carver Prize for Short Fiction, and her work has appeared in Rain Taxi Review; Boston Book Review, Poetry Flash, Left Curve, al-Ahram Weekly, and Al Jadid, among others; she is on the editorial board of the Baltimore Review, and is Assistant Professor of English at Community College of Baltimore County.

Erin Keane is the author of The Gravity Soundtrack, a full-length collection of poems forthcoming from WordFarm in 2007, and The One-Hit Wonders (Snark Publishing), a chapbook of poems about and inspired by rock & roll. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming in many magazines, including Nimrod, Phoebe, Spoon River Poetry Review, Sou'wester, Poems & Plays, New Southerner, Now & Then and Louisville Magazine. A recipient of a fellowship from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, she directs the InKY Reading Series in Louisville, KY. Keane also writes a blog for Velocity and serves on the editorial boards of New Southerner and The Heartland Review.

She teaches sophomores about Pop Music in American Literature at Bellarmine University and high school creative writing workshops for the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts. Keane earned her MFA in creative writing at Spalding University and won the 2003 National Society of Arts and Letters Kentucky Chapter prize for literature.

Cyn Kitchen teaches literature and creative writing at Knox College. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Carve, New Southerner, KeepGoing.org, sfwp.org, Literary Mama, Minnetonka Review and Louisville Review. She lives and writes in hard-won peace with her husband, children and animals in Galesburg, IL. Michelle Morgan lives in Auburn, Maine. Her poems, essays and artwork have appeared or are forthcoming numerous journals, including parva sed apta, Mannequin Envy, Arabesques Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster,

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4SQ, JMWW, The Banyan Review, Salt River Review, The Aurorean, Off the Coast, Wolf Moon Journal, Plain Spoke, from east to west, Pemmican, Ruined Music, Wicked Alice, Literal Translations, Alimentum and New Verse News, and will be included in four forthcoming anthologies: Gooseriver Anthology 2007, Voyage: A Franco-American Heritage, Out of Line, and Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger American Poets. She is editor of the online literary & arts journal panamowa: a new lit order, and a graduate student in the American and New England Studies program at the University of Southern Maine.

Tree Riesener has published poetry and short fiction in such magazines as The Evergreen Review, Identity Theory, Pindeldyboz, Blue Fifth, 5_trope, Loch Raven Review, The Belletrist Review, Nebo, The Source, Hinge, Schuylkill Valley Review, Diner, Lynx, The Ghazal Page, Fine Print, Muse Apprentice Guild, and EVerse Radio. A winner in the Authors in the Park Short Story Competition, she also won a double first for the Short-Short Story and the Literary Short Story at the Philadelphia Writers Conference. Her achievements include the Semi-Finals of the Pablo Neruda Poetry Competition, three short stories staged in the Writing Aloud Productions of InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia, a Hawthornden International Writing Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, and the William Van Wert Fiction Award. She is Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. The author of Liminalog, a chapbook of ghazals and sijo, she is active in Philadelphia area spoken word activities. Her new chapbook, Inscapes, will be published in late 2007 or early 2008 by Finishing Line Press.

Peter Schwartz is the former editor of 'eye' and an associate art editor of Mad Hatters' Review. His artwork can be seen all over the Internet but specifically at: www.sitrahahra.com. His paintings have been published on such sites as HiNgE, Subtle Tea, and Mastodon Dentist. His paintings are in the print journals Orange Coast Review, Whiskey Island, and The Louisiana Review to name a few. He has over 200 poems published in such journals as Porcupine, Vox, and Sein und Werden. His fiction has been published on such sites as Pindeldyboz and Dogmatika. His last exhibition was through Aesthetica Magazine and featured a projection of one of his digital paintings on a busy street in York, UK. Currently he is working on paintings for an exhibit at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. Ira Sukrungruang's work has appeared in Witness, North American Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and numerous other literary journals. He is the coeditor of What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology (Harvest Books 2003) and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology (2005). When he isn't teaching creative writing at State University of New York Oswego, he likes to play Dungeons and Dragons with his students.

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Sue Turner is a long-time resident of Coeur d'Alene who gave up gainful employment when her left brain turned right in 1996. She's published a few novels and some poetry chapbooks, exhibits paintings in various local galleries, juggles three or four blogs, and produces little movies for posterity.

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz where she teaches composition, creative writing, creative nonfiction, Holocaust literature and autobiography courses. Her work has been featured in Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, HOme Planet News, and Wind, among other literary journals. She also has published two collections of poetry through the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues; She Had This Memory).

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